Category Archives: Newest Blogs (最新ブログ)

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) January 18, 2021 SARS-CoV-2 Treat in Place As Japan’s hospitals fill up due to the pandemic, it is becoming obvious that they will not be able to handle the flood of patients resulting from SARS-CoV-2. It may seem cruel and callous, but the final answer lies in the best option for treating a pandemic, which is to treat in place. Assembling patients into a single location, such as a hospital to care for them makes sense in the case of non-infectious illnesses, MCIs or injuries, but it probably isn’t the best way to handle viruses with the infectiousness of SARS-CoV-2. For one thing, you’re putting patients with various viral loads in a single location where those with the higher viral levels can take the airborne virus to higher levels. Furthermore, no matter how much care […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) January 6, 2021 The other day, I was wondering if I should invest in a 5G capable smartphone and decided to check out how far the networks had been deployed in Japan. A check at this site convinced me that changing over isn’t worth the money at the moment. Note that you’ll need to choose the Carrier on the page to view the coverage. If you just want to see the docomo areas, you can take a look at this map in Japanese (the red circles are 5G). The bottom line is that 5G hasn’t really arrived yet and since smartphones evolve every day, you’d be best holding off on getting a 5G model unless you live in one of those few metropolitan areas where you can access it. 5Gはまだまだ 先日、5Gスマホへの買い替えを考えていた。そこで国内のネットワーク展開を調べた。このサイトを見たら、展開がまだまだだと分かった（地図を使うには『Carrier』を選択する必要がある）。今のネットワーク網なら買い替えのお金はもったいないとも解った。 ドコモだけの地図ならここで見られる。 結局、5Gはまだだ。スマホがどんどん進化しているので大都会のサービスが普及している狭い地域内に住んでいない限り、5G対応スマホの今の購入は損。 *************** English […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) January 4, 2021 DDT Many folks who are reading this article will never have heard of the insecticide DDT. It was developed by the Swiss chemist Müller in 1939 and he won a Nobel Prize for it in 1948. It was also one of the chemicals that received a few pages of attention in my college physical chem text in the early 1970s. It was widely used in WWII to control typhus in mosquito-infested battlegrounds and almost wiped out the disease where it was used. In 1945 permission for use in agriculture was granted and it nearly wiped out malaria in North America and Europe. Japanese people who were alive at the end of WWII probably remember being dusted with its powder formulation, which was used for flea and lice control. In 1962 Rachel Carson […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) January 3, 2021 As I was reading psychiatrist Dr. Jim Tucker’s “Return to Life”, I found an interesting case* taken from his mentor Dr. Ian Stevenson in which one of his associates, Francis Story visited a man in Thailand who claimed to have been reincarnated from a life as a snake. It seemed that he had been a python in his previous life and had been killed by a local hunter. He also claimed to have been a deer in his life before the python. The man’s name was Dalawong and when he was three, he came face to face with the man who killed him in his life as a snake. He was able to give details that only the man would know. Interestingly enough, Dalawong also suffered from ichthyosis, wherein the skin takes […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) January 2, 2021 2021 Predictions December 31, 2020 and January 1, 2021 Uploaded Jan. 2, 2021 （日本語が英語記事の下にある） Introduction For those of you new to my predictions, at the end of and sometimes at the beginning of each year, I meditate and try to peer into the future. Overall, my accuracy rate is about 70%, so you should not take everything I predict as inevitable because many predictions will fail to materialize. The future is always difficult to see because there are many different possible timelines. This year was especially so because of the symbolic imagery that was present in my visions. In addition, most of the timelines followed a theme of a world war with China, which made them extremely painful to view. Thus, this year’s visions and predictions point to a future that I […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) December 29, 2020 The skin is invested with three kinds of temperature receptors: cold receptors, heat receptors and pain receptors. There are three to ten times more cold receptors than heat receptors in various spots, so your perception of cold is far more likely to be more rapid and stronger than your perception of heat. The pain receptors only kick in when there are temperature extremes, so they’re active in cases of “freezing cold” or “burning heat.” When the free nerve ending temperature receptors perceive cold or heat, they send it to the brain via one of two pathways: the neospinalthalamic tract (fast pain) or the paleothalamic spinal tract (slow pain). Most cold receptors transmit their signals through the fast pain pathway through Aδ nerve fibers at a speed of about 20m/sec. Cold receptors tend […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) December 22, 2020 The mutant strain of SARS-CoV-2 named B.1.1.7 discovered in the UK is quite unusual. Up until recently, SARS-CoV-2 had been mutating at the rate of 1 to 2 mutations per month. B.1.1.7 shows 17 mutations! According to this article, eight out of its seventeen mutations are those that encode the gene on the spike protein on the virus surface. One of them named N501Y increases the tightness of the binding to the ACE2 receptor, which is the pathway into human cells. The other, known as 69-70del, seems to cause the loss of two amino acids in the spike protein. What’s worrisome about this is that the lack of those two amino acids seems to have allowed viruses without them to elude the immune response in immunocompromised patients. To make matters worse, a […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) December 20, 2020 The shared umbrella theme is quite popular in Japanese dramas linking lovers. I think that it’s rather unique to Japanese culture and quite cute. One of my students wrote about his first experience with the shared umbrella phenomenon in an autobiography he was writing for my class. It was after the end of WWII and he had been shifted from his all-male junior high to a co-ed school. One day, it was raining and a girl from his class invited her to share her umbrella on his way home. He mentioned his excitement and joy at sharing such a close space with a girl! The experience left such an impression on him that he still remembers it to this day! My first experience with a shared umbrella came soon after I came […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) December 19, 2020 You might have wondered why doctors always want to know which meds you’re taking before they prescribe something. Most people think that drugs act independently and will do only what they’re supposed to do. A few years ago in a pharmacology course, I learned that this was far from true. Drugs can interact in the following ways. Types of Drug Interactions Additive The effect of substance A and substance B together is equal to the sum of their independent individual effects. I think of this as A+B =[A][B]. An example would be aspirin and acetaminophen. Permissive Substance A has to be present to get the full effect of substance B. I think of this as B dependent on A. An example would be the catecholamine response dependent on cortisol. Synergistic Substance A […]

By Billy Hammond (Copyright AELS) December 7, 2020 This year’s Chinese coronavirus pandemic has led to shrines and temples encouraging traditional New Year’s visits from December in order to avoid crowding and spreading the virus. Normally, most people will buy bad-luck-breaking arrows, amulets and other good luck charms when they visit a shrine or temple during the first three days of the New Year. They return them to the shrine or temple the following year during their visit and buy a replacement. This suggests an effective time frame of twelve months for the good luck charm. However, in the case of this year, since the good luck charms are being sold in December, they must have an effective period of thirteen months – an extension of a full month of power before they’re drained. My personal opinion is that good […]